Traditional analyses of nineteenth-century politics have assigned women a peripheral role. By adopting a broader interpretation of political participation, the author identifies how middle-class women were able to contribute to political affairs in the nineteenth century. Examining the contribution that women made to British political life in the period 1800-1870 stimulates debates about gender and politics, the nature of authority and the definition of political culture. This volume examines female engagement in both traditional and unconventional political arenas, including female sociability, salons, child-rearing and education, health, consumption, religious reform and nationalism. Richardson focuses on middle-class women’s social, cultural, intellectual and political authority, as implemented by a range of public figures and lesser-known campaigners. The activists discussed and their varying political, economic and religious backgrounds will demonstrate the significance of female interventions in shaping the political culture of the period and beyond.

Women and Politics: Paths to Power and Political Influence examines the role of women in politics from the early women's movements to the female politicians in power today. The revised fourth edition includes: a new preface analyzing the 2020 elections, focusing on the historic victory of Kamala Harris and the gendered and racist critiques she endured on the campaign trail. recognition of the centennial of women's suffrage, with greater attention to Black and Indigenous women's often overlooked contributions to the fight for suffrage and expanded rights election results from the historic 2020 elections when more women filed congressional candidacies than ever before and women’s numbers in both Congress and state legislatures reached record highs. analysis of the gender gap in voting in 2020, focusing on both race and gender. updates reflecting President Biden's historic cabinet picks, including Deb Haaland as the first Native American to lead the Department of the Interior and Janet Yellen as the first woman to lead the Treasury Department. coverage of the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the nomination and confirmation of her replacement, Amy Coney Barrett.

Why don’t women have more influence over the way the world is structured? Written by four leaders within the national and international academic caucuses on women and politics, Why Don't Women Rule the World? by J. Cherie Strachan , Lori M. Poloni-Staudinger, Shannon Jenkins, and Candice D. Ortbals helps you to understand how the underrepresentation of women manifests within politics, and the impact this has on policy. Grounded in theory with practical, job-related activities, the book offers a thorough introduction to the study of women and politics, and will bolster your political interests, ambitions, and efficacy.

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider political order? The First Political Order is a groundbreaking demonstration that the persistent and systematic subordination of women underlies all other institutions, with wide-ranging implications for global security and development. Incorporating research findings spanning a variety of social science disciplines and comprehensive empirical data detailing the status of women around the globe, the book shows that female subordination functions almost as a curse upon nations. A society’s choice to subjugate women has significant negative consequences: worse governance, worse conflict, worse stability, worse economic performance, worse food security, worse health, worse demographic problems, worse environmental protection, and worse social progress. Yet despite the pervasive power of social and political structures that subordinate women, history—and the data—reveal possibilities for progress. The First Political Order shows that when steps are taken to reduce the hold of inequitable laws, customs, and practices, outcomes for all improve. It offers a new paradigm for understanding insecurity, instability, autocracy, and violence, explaining what the international community can do now to promote more equitable relations between men and women and, thereby, security and peace. With comprehensive empirical evidence of the wide-ranging harm of subjugating women, it is an important book for security scholars, social scientists, policy makers, historians, and advocates for women worldwide.

In this pathbreaking study of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Mill, Susan Moller Okin turns to the tradition of political philosophy that pervades Western culture and its institutions to understand why the gap between formal and real gender equality persists. Our philosophical heritage, Okin argues, largely rests on the assumption of the natural inequality of the sexes. Women cannot be included as equals within political theory unless its deep-rooted assumptions about the traditional family, its sex roles, and its relation to the wider world of political society are challenged. So long as this attitude pervades our institutions and behavior, the formal equality women have won has no chance of becoming substantive.

This volume brings together leading gender and politics scholars to assess how women’s political empowerment can best be conceptualized and measured on a global scale. It argues that women’s political empowerment is a fundamental process of transformation for benchmarking and understanding all political empowerment gains across the globe. Chapters improve our global understanding of women's political empowerment through cross-national comparisons, a synthesis of methodological approaches across varied levels of politics, and attention to the ways gender intersects with myriad factors in shaping women’s political empowerment. This book is an indispensable resource for scholars of politics and gender, as well as being relevant to a global scholarly and policy community.

Political Worlds of Women provides a comprehensive overview of women's political activism, comparing formal and informal channels of power from official institutions of state to grassroots mobilizations and Internet campaigns. Illuminating the politics of identity enmeshed in local, national, and global gender orders, this book explores women's creation of new political spaces and innovative political strategies to secure full citizenship and equal access to political power. Incorporating case studies from Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, Mary Hawkesworth analyzes critical issues such as immigration and citizenship, the politics of representation, sexual regulation, and gender mainstreaming in order to examine how women mobilize in this era of globalization. Political Worlds of Women deepens understandings of national and global citizenship and presents the formidable challenges facing racial and gender justice in the contemporary world. It is an essential resource for students and scholars of women's studies and gender politics.